There's an economist named Anne Krueger. I lost money on her because I bet that Anne Krueger would become the first female to win the Nobel prize, and she wasn't; somebody else won it last year. But I think she'll be the second. She came up with a very easy way of thinking about when regulation is doing what it's supposed to and when it isn't. Basically, you think of a company that has a million dollars. It could invest it in R and D, or innovation, or doing something creative, or the company could take the same million dollars and invest it in lobbying politicians, or lobbying civil servants, or contorting itself so that it qualifies for subsidies. All those things are expensive, and a company can do either one or the other, and it will do whichever is more profitable. If we set up a system of regulations so that lobbying for favourable regulations or twisting and contorting oneself to qualify for tax breaks or subsidies is more profitable than investing in innovation, then our companies are going to twist and contort and lobby. They're not going to innovate.
I think what government needs to do is say, okay, we want to protect the culture of our three nations. How are we going to do that in a way that doesn't cause companies to invest money in twisting and contorting and lobbying, rather than in innovation?
I worry that our Canadian content regulations and our foreign ownership regulations are encouraging companies to twist and contort and lobby, rather than innovate.